


Learning by Example

by Corycides



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-04-20
Updated: 2012-04-20
Packaged: 2017-11-04 00:37:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 275
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/387712
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Corycides/pseuds/Corycides
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A snippet of Bellatrix's time in Azkaban</p>
            </blockquote>





	Learning by Example

 

One. Two. Three. Four.

She had elegant feet, small and arched and with dainty, pink toes. Had. Before the close, stone walls and the four steps that took from one side of the room to the other. Now her feet were black with dirt, raw with blisters and callused like a house-elves. Her hair was greasy and knotted and her breasts slack against the slatted arch of her ribs.

Her beauty was gone, but she still had her mind.

Shrieks of laughter bounced off the walls, like metal scraping on metal. It took her time to remember that it was her own. She stopped and crouched down by the wall, pressing her cheek hard to the wall. There was a chip in the mortar. A chink. A crack. She had worried at it with her nail, ripping it down to the nub, until her voice could wriggle through.

'Tell me a story,' she whispered.

On the other side of the wall the prisoner whimpered. She closed her eyes, lashes brushing the stone, and breathed in.

'Tell me your story,' she said.

She had been clever, wily and quick before. A woman to contend with. It was all rusted and deformed now, her mind scratching against itself in odd ways when she tried to think. They couldn't take it away though. Ruin, but not remove. So she had watched them and learnt from them and for every memory they took from her, every thought they nibbled from the nodules of her brain, she took it back from her neighbour.

They ate her soul, and she patched the holes with bits of con-artist and murderer and thief.

 


End file.
